


Somewhere Between the Two of Us

by AM Slaughter (PoisonWrites)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Sweethearts, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Flashbacks, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Memory Loss, Multi, Nightmares, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovered Memories, Resolved Sexual Tension, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Soulmates, The Losers Club (IT) All Appear, The Losers Club (IT) Love Each Other, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-01-04 19:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21203192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonWrites/pseuds/AM%20Slaughter
Summary: "Richie's childhood dreams were always nebulous, swirling and warping from one reality-bending phantasm to the next. Upon awakening, Richie would cry, but they would be gone, rolling from his mind like smoke. Fog dissipating as the sun rose, and breaking apart the terrifying shadows on his wall. After Derry, though, they changed. No longer were the dreams these rolling, smoky, caricatures of real life, but they were hard-edged and distinct, and all smelled of iron and sweat, while the roar of the cave echoed in his ears. Richie was there again, every night, holding Eddie as the cave collapsed."Richie starts dreaming about Eddie. He doesn't stop. Fix-it AU...kind of.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is the product of me leaving It Chapter 2 the weekend it was released, and furiously texting a friend 2k of a nearly incomprehensible post-canon fix-it. Enjoy!

_ “There's something in the shadows / In the corner of your room / A dark heart is beating / And waiting for you” _ \--In the Room Where You Sleep, Dead Man's Bones

_ “In these dreams it's always you: the boy in the sweatshirt, the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge. Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.” _ \-- I Had a Dream About You, Richard Siken

I

Snowflakes. That’s what the ashes of the clown had reminded Richie of, though he wouldn’t come to realize this association for another three years. In the gossamer light of their underworld, the last of his childhood nightmare floated off, light as anything, into the dark void of the cave, off and off until he couldn’t see the flakes anymore. Maybe they vanished, or maybe it was too dark, Richie wasn’t sure. It was too dark to see most things in the cave, including the blood on his shirt, the snagged skin from rocks and debris causing trickles to roll down his arm, and catch under his nails. He reasoned to himself that this was why it took so long to see the extent of Pennywise’s work on Eddie. His shirt was soaked with blood, but, in the grimy haze of the cave, the darkness could have been anything. 

“H-honey…” Bev’s voice was always one that soothed him. Even in the cave, it was like a balm; spring honey, golden, warm. Reminiscent of nights, only just remembered, sitting on his bathroom floor, crying his heart out over something long forgotten, while she soothed a hand through his hair, and passed him the half-empty bottle of vodka. 

“What?” He turned, and he knew, even in the low lighting, that his eyes were wild. Under his palm, Eddie was warm.

Bev’s eyes shone, and she gasped, mouth not quite forming the words, pale lips working in a fretful circle until: “He’s dead.” 

She moved towards him, carefully, like he was a wild animal that would startle, and he felt much the same, feeling his heart beating so hard, it was hammering in his fingertips, tinnitus ringing in his ears and muffling that barely-concealed, frenetic edge in Bev’s voice.

“We have to go,” she didn’t touch him, but swayed, like a ghost on the wind, several feet away. The ground was shaking harder and harder under Richie, a rumbling that traveled up his legs and his spine, “Come on. Come on, Richie.” 

“We gotta go.” Bill next to him, eyes also glassy but his voice steady; always the leader. There was a massive crashing sound, and the wind picked up, blowing dust and dirt everywhere, sticking in Richie’s hair and cuts and the streaks of tears down his cheeks. And with that, feeling the cold wind against him, under the steely gaze of Bill fucking Denbrough, survivor, Richie felt his heart, like the heart of Pennywise, begin to cave in.

So quickly, Richie was sure he startled the others, he snapped forward, pulling the cooling body of Eddie towards him. A howl like he had never made left his body, twisting his hands in the fabric of Eddie’s red jacket; cotton, soft and warm and lived in, and smelling of him. Then, it smelled like iron and dirty water, but not twelve hours earlier, had smelled of lavender and mint, and Eddie’s own skin. And it was the stupidest thing, wondering if Myra had bought the detergent, or if Eddie did his own laundry, and tears streamed forward, because that didn’t matter anymore, and never would, and whatever dull and domestic life Eddie had created for himself in New York was now forever arrested in amber, damned to crystalize in that moment in time. 

Behind him, Bill, and now Ben, were yelling something. Large chunks of rock were coming down now, and one landed particularly close to Eddie. Richie moved one hand into Eddie’s hair, pulling his head onto his shoulder, hoping to feel the ghost of his breath against his cheek. He felt nothing but the cold, wet press of Eddie’s hair against him.

“We can still help him, he’s just hurt, we can still help him!” He was screaming, drunk on sorrow. He felt strong hands grasp his shoulders, and begin to pull. “Guys, we can still help him!” Pulling harder now, urging him upwards.

Richie was a fighter, though, and was stronger than he looked. He bucked against the hands, hearing, through the roar of the cave, his shirt rip. Somewhere, Ben’s voice drifted to his ears, and vaguely, Richie thought he sounded panicked. 

“Bill—I—He’s too strong! He’s going to get us killed!”

“Richie!” Bill pleaded against his ear, still struggling against Richie’s weight, “Richie, please. Please!”

“Richie!” Bev was shrieking now, too, and he half expected her to grab the scruff of his collar, pull him up, make him leave. But her touch never came, and Mike, for all his love and kindness and affection for Richie, made the call. 

“He’s going to get us all killed!” His voice was deep, but being drowned out by the second, “Ben, Bill! We gotta go!”

“Richie…” One last whisper, from Bill, his hot, tear-drenched cheek pressed to Richie’s, and then they were all gone, Richie left alone with Eddie, still cradling his limp body.

“Eddie…” Like a prayer, he said this over and over into Eddie’s matted hair, and profoundly, so sharp and sudden, like being dunked in icy water, a visceral memory overtook Richie. 

Before, when they were kids, and before Pennywise, Eddie used to spend the night at Richie’s, through much coercion and sweet-talking on the part of Mrs. Tozier to Mrs. Kaspbrak. Friday nights, they would lay in bed, watching Richie’s dad’s old VHS tapes of Dr. No and Thunderball, getting sick from gorging on popcorn and candy that was definitely not on the approved foods list Eddie came handy with. Distracting themselves by roughhousing and impersonations of the actors, Richie screwing up his nose to do a posh, nasally Sean Connery. Eddie would fall back, laughing so hard dewdrops pricked at the corners of his eyes with a hand clapped over his mouth.

“Shocking!” Richie pulled him closer, hands itching up his sides and tickling him, often like he tickled his little sisters. He would snuffle his nose in Eddie’s hair, trying to keep his voice down so his dad didn’t wake up and shush them, “Positively shocking!” But his accent always caused Eddie to burst at the seams, and, inevitably, they would be admonished by either of Richie’s tired-eyed parents. 

“I’m so sorry…” Richie whispered against that same hair, the swelling guilt of forgetting everything about Eddie welling up inside him, pouring over as tears and whimpers. “I’m so sorry, Eddie. I couldn’t—I didn’t—” He pulled back, and was met with the half-lidded eyes and sallow face of his best friend.

Eddie’s eyes snapped open, locking onto Richie. Eddie always did have nice eyes, in Richie’s opinion. Although the boy himself complained about their dullness all through high school, Richie saw them for what they were: brown, but not plain brown. Rich earth, flecked with gold, and ringed with black. Terra-cotta and umber and topaz, sometimes even glinting deep red, in the right light. Richie had always admired them, his own being a near-black that was only amplified by his giant glasses. Eddie had no such amphibian-resemblance, just his eyes, and the stunning constellation of freckles across his nose that always managed to wind Richie for some reason.

When Eddie looked up at Richie in the cave, Richie screamed. Because Eddie’s eyes were no longer topaz, or coffee, but grey. A dead, lifeless grey. The eyes of an unlucky fish, washed up on the banks of the quarry. His freckles looked more like pock-marks against his greenish skin. 

“E-eddie…” Richie managed to choke out.

Eddie’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. His lips were as white and pale as the rest of him.

“Eddie, buddy, we gotta go.” And like sensing Richie’s words, the cave gave a great shudder under him. 

Eddie shook his head slowly, like the movement was difficult, and twitched one hand. It felt like ages, but the hand moved, dust beginning to choke Richie as the cave tilted. Up it came, until thin fingers brushed Richie’s cheek, cold as ever. His lips still worked, making him look even more like a wayward fish.

“Eddie, please, what is it?” He met Eddie’s hand, covering it, trying to warm it with his own. Eddie was alive, and maybe they could get out. The cave was crashing, but there was a way—there had to be!

“R-Rich—” The dry and shriveled voice of Eddie floated between his lips.

“Yes! What is it, Eds?”

“Richie,” Grey eyes unfocused, hand cupping his cheek, “I’m—”

Richie woke up.

II

In the two years Richie was in college, the longest he had a roommate was three weeks. School started out simple enough: go to class, come back to his dorm, do homework and sleep, with smatterings of clubs, and food, and parties in between. Hazy nights that Richie could still hear, still smell, if he tried hard enough, and was right on the brink of sleep. 

While living at home, no one ever made a big deal out of the way Richie slept; sure, he had nightmares, but one of his sisters, Abby, sleepwalked, and Emmie, the baby, woke up crying nearly every night for the first five years of her life. Richie, in all his frightful nights awake, whimpering at his ceiling full of plastic stars, huddled and shivering under his Star Wars comforter, was largely ignored, until his roommate sat him down with their RA, who had been smiling pleasantly over untouched mint tea and cookies.

“The thing is, Richie,” he had been a nice guy. Dark skin, but a luminous smile that Richie took turns guessing with his friends how much it cost. His dreadlocks were piled in a large bun on top of his head, and he always smelled of incense and hemp. 

“The dorms need to be a learning environment. And yeah,” he cut Richie off as he opened his mouth to say something, “that includes you. We want everyone to feel safe, and—” he fidgeted, realizing _ safe _ gave away his position: RA, offense, Richie, defense. Wacko. Nut-job. Broken. “We think—” _ We? _ “that a single dorm might work best…for everyone.” And when his former roommate left (God, Richie couldn’t even remember what the guy looked like now), his RA grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back.

“Here.” He placed a brochure in Richie’s hand. “Are you aware we offer three free counseling sessions a month? It comes with the tuition. Listen,” He leaned in, using the same voice the high school counselor used on him, once they found out _ he _ had been writing the lewd graffiti about himself in the boys’ toilets, “we get this sometimes. Every few semesters, one of the new kids, they…” shifting his copper eyes away, “they have a hard time adjusting to school life. And Richie, you don’t seem like the kind who’s having a hard time socially, which is good, but…this happens, okay? And it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” And he clapped him on the arm, all manly camaraderie, _ go-get-em tiger _, 1000 watt smile that kept his place as an RA. 

Richie had nodded, face burning red and hot all the way from the floor’s meeting room to his dorm, where he packed up his things in silence, save for the sound of laughter in the next dorm over. When people asked about the single, he bragged, told them how his dad was a dentist, how his family could afford for him not to live in a shitty, cramped, two-person room, and they would nod, envious of his isolation. It wasn’t long before he was dropping out and moving to California, but in those four semesters, long and tedious and drug-smudged as they were, Richie never had another roommate. 

The thing was, though, the single room hadn’t helped, and neither had his move to sunny, sunny California. Richie still awoke, eyes cracked open to the dark room around him, the shadows taking on an inky, oozing quality between his floorboards and bare walls, which may not have upset just any twenty-something, but the dreams he had before opening his eyes didn’t help; fanged, dripping maws, with seemingly endless rows of teeth on teeth on teeth, and oh, god, they were still there, weren’t they? Some part of him knew that in a sewer, in a town Richie couldn’t name, couldn’t place but in his deepest dreams, that the teeth were still there, waiting for him to come floating back. Sometimes, he awoke, and the tinny smell of brackish water was coming from somewhere he couldn’t place. 

These childhood nightmares were just that; like waves rolling in and out of a shore, dark black water lapping at Richie’s ankles. A projector, snapping from one slide to the next, or sometimes, a watercolor, colors bleeding into one another. Stan, 12 again, and standing in the snow, even though it was perfectly sunny, and holding an umbrella over him, asking which way to the train. Richie in the sun and snow, blinking against the glare, as a palm tree turned into Pennywise, and laughed and laughed and laughed, right along with Stanley. 

These dreams were always nebulous, swirling and warping from one reality-bending phantasm to the next. Upon awakening, Richie would cry, but they would be gone, rolling from his mind like smoke. Fog dissipating as the sun rose, and breaking apart those same, terrifying shadows on his wall. After Derry, though, they changed. No longer were the dreams these rolling, smoky, caricatures of real life, but they were hard-edged and distinct, and all smelled of iron and sweat, while the roar of the cave echoed in his ears. Richie was there again, every night, holding Eddie as the cave collapsed. 

One morning, early into autumn, Richie awoke with a start, jolted by the cold flesh of Eddie’s hand on his. Like the comedown from a bad high, he felt what he could only describe as his soul reentering his body, and the slowing of his brain from a spinning, dizzying velocity. There were no longer plastic stars on his ceiling, but Richie picked out the faults; a small crack here, a smudge there, until he felt like he could stand up. 

He picked himself out of bed, and felt, like the night before, and the night before that, that his shirt was soaked through with sweat, and already cooling from the air conditioner. His bangs clung to his forehead, tangled and in need of a wash, and he flipped them out of his eyes as he grappled for his phone and checked the time. 9:36 AM, in cold, white numbers, and only a few unread texts:

_ 7:43 AM, Mom: Give me a call, Ester is going to be in NYC and wants to come see you! LOL xx _(his mother still thought LOL stood for ‘lots of love’, and the family had yet to correct her).

_ 8:17 AM, Ester (purple heart emoji): Layover at JFK. Take me out to dinner? _

_ 8:49 AM, Kevin: Brunch at Boulud today, 11am. See you then. _

_ 9:02 AM, 212-803-9881: Hey Richie, this is Maude. Need you to come in for another fitting ASAP. Call me. _

Richie groaned, setting the phone back down and heading to the bathroom. The entire apartment was minimalist, with stark white walls, and neatly polished hardwood floors. The bathroom was no different, with white tiles, a double sink, and a clawfoot tub on one side of the room he had never used, nor consented to being in his home. Overall, it was a bathroom much too large for a bachelor, and Richie noted its emptiness constantly, with nothing but his single toothbrush on the counter, his razor, his comb.

Ignoring the tub, Richie started the shower, and then stepped back to the sinks while waiting for the hot water to come banging through the pipes. He may have been in one of the more expensive apartments in NYC, but that didn’t stop the city’s plumbing from being god-awful. In the meantime, he grabbed his toothbrush, scrubbing over his teeth quickly, before catching a glance of himself in the mirror. His stubble was darker than usual, and his hair was a tangled, bird’s nest of a thing. And even closer, leaning in with a glob of toothpaste on the corner of his mouth, Richie saw his eyes were bloodshot.

“Shit” he murmured, after spitting into the sink. Luckily, the mirror was beginning to fog over.

The shower was blisteringly hot, bringing Richie back to earth just as well as the steaming pot of coffee he made afterwards. His hands still shook as he held his mug though, looking out over New York City from his Upper East Side post. Bug-like cars buzzed six stories below him, crawling to work in dutiful lines, while their paint glimmered in the late-September morning. 

Richie had needed a change after Derry, and the killer clown, and the tidal wave of _ ‘holy shit, my entire life has been a _ lie’. Los Angeles, with its technicolor buildings, and palms with their leaves exalting the ever-shining sun, felt blurred around the edges, like burnt-out photos from a birthday he couldn’t remember; faces like wax figures. Coming back to the east coast felt familiar, _ comfortable _, even. As soon as he touched down in LA and walked out into the crisp, artificial air of LAX, Richie called his manager, and told him he was moving to NYC. He had a new apartment in three days, and all his shit was moved within a week. 

He wasn’t quite sure why he chose NYC. Maybe it was the allure of the east coast, or maybe it was the echo of Eddie, _ I owe this to him, _ like the idea of treading his former life was somehow penance for forgetting him. Whatever it was, it was soon after the move that the new nightmares started; with cardboard boxes still strewn across the floor, lying around his kitchen and living room without much care. Richie was closing his eyes near every night to _ him. _

At first, the dreams weren’t really dreams, but flashes, easily confused with his old childhood nightmares. There was something deeper about them though, that Richie felt was different almost instantly, tinged in sepia and firm. The image of Eddie and his back against the stoney wall of the cave was unwavering under Richie’s scrutiny, unlike the nightmares from before. Last night, Eddie grabbed his hand, and it had been cold. Richie felt a shiver run through his body at the very thought of it wrapped around his own; something like a marble statue, the hands he would grab in the museums when he was still a child. Those hadn’t moved, though, and they certainly hadn’t opened their mouths. No, not like Eddie, who was opening his, saying something, _ something _—

“Fuck!” Richie hadn’t _ actually _ noticed he was shaking until he dropped his coffee mug. It shattered on the floor, with porcelain bits thrown in all directions, marble kitchen tiles splattered with black coffee. “Fuck.” And he wilted against the cabinet. On the back of his neck, the beads of sweat that had formed there began to chill.

III

The sun was beating down hard that day, the weather warmer than one would expect for September, and Richie’s coat hung off the back of his chair. Still, there was a clear sky and a breeze, albeit one that carried the noxious smell of cars and trash and New York City over to their table. Richie watched as a corner of the white tablecloth fluttered in the breeze, fighting under the weight of buttery croissants and jars of jam to fly away. Next to their table, a couple chattered in low French, the woman with glossy red nails that glinted in the noon sun. 

“Rich! Earth to Rich?” Richie jumped in his chair, nearly knocking over the glasses on the table. In front of him, Kevin stared at him, hands paused over the papers he had been shuffling through.

Kevin was Richie’s manager, and had been for the past three years. He was a heavyset man, with a thick neck and round, puffy cheeks. In the middle of his face was a cherry red nose, which had spiderwebs of veins broken across it like he was some kind of Canadian fur trapper caught in the cold. He looked more like a heavyweight boxer than a celebrity manager, and one night, after an awards ceremony, Richie and Kevin shared a celebratory blunt, during which Kevin confided in him that he used to be a drunk.

_ “Was a bus driver, but got one drunk driving conviction and BAM!” _ He had smacked his fist in his palm, mimicking the gavel of a judge, _ “Off I went. Judge went easy on me, though. I was twenty-six—so much to live for! Detoxed in jail, and the moment I was released, went back to school.” _

Richie would have never known if Kevin hadn’t told him; his large, broad stature disguised the inner workings of a particularly effective manager. He was professional; punctual and organized to an almost horrifying degree. He had never given Richie a clue to suspect he had been anything short of being born into the world with a clipboard in one hand, and a Blackberry in the other. 

Back in the present day, Richie blinked against the sun, focusing on the man across from him. “Yeah? Ah, yeah, sorry.”

“Jesus Christ.” Kevin raised his eyes to the heavens, and muttered something in a language Richie didn’t understand or recognize. “Are you hitting the booze again? I thought you cut that shit out—”

“I’m not drunk, man.” 

“You don’t think I know when you’re drunk? Look, I’m not here to police your life,” an elbow on the table, and one thick finger pointed at Richie, the same way his mother used to angle a finger at him mid-lecture, “but if this is going to interfere with your new contract,” a snort of laughter, “I would prefer you give me a heads-up.” And he sat back in his chair, the wicker of the back creaking against his frame.

It wasn’t like Kevin was in the wrong to be worried about Richie. More than once, Kevin had been forced to cancel tour dates on his behalf, because Richie was neck deep in the toilet bowl, vomiting his guts out after a day of “pre-gaming”. Proudly, Richie only sported one stint in AA; the rest of his drinking “problem” (which Richie loathed to call it) was moderated nearly entirely by his involvement in his work. Funnily, when he stopped downing three shots before every show, his material got better, and his writing, well, apparently sober Richie was a bit better of a writer than drunk Richie. So much better, in fact, it was like a switch had been flipped; contract offers for his new act were already flooding Kevin’s Blackberry, faster than Richie had ever seen them come in. Richie was by no means perfect, but he was…better. Better than he had been a year ago.

“I’m not…I’m not drunk, Kev.” Richie rubbed his eyes, and, unremarkably, realized he felt entirely hungover. Maybe he should be getting drunk, he thought sickly to himself, and kill two birds with one stone. He let that thought fly away in the wind with a chuckle, and instead reached for the coffee in front of him. 

“I’ve…been having some trouble sleeping is all. New York takes some getting used to.” He watched a tall woman walk past them, in combat boots and ripped jeans. She was walking six dogs, one of which looked in Richie’s direction.

Kevin’s shoulders relaxed. “Yeah, I hear you…” Kevin had also been dragged to the east coast with Richie. “I think it’s something to do with the air pressure. Or is it the altitude? You let me know if you need anything to help you sleep; I’ve got a hookup here too, seems to be way more professional than that jackass from Hollywood.”

“Already?” Richie raised an eyebrow. Maybe it was his background, but Kevin was a lot less strict about self-medicating than he was about drinking.

“Hey, I do my job, you do yours, right?” He flashed a smile, hands splayed in a _ you get me? _ gesture. And Kevin was nothing but effective at his job. “You want me to text them?”

“No. No, I’m not—” He waved a hand, hoping to convey whatever blurry emotions he was feeling towards the idea of popping pills. Probably not the best idea, right?

The smile was still on his face, hands still open, “I got you, I got you.” And, practiced as ever, Kevin changed the topic quickly, handing a paper over to Richie. “Here, have a look at this.”

“Mmm.” He took the paper with a hum, and quickly realized it was text-heavy and technical-seeming, two things for which Richie cared little. “Our list of demands?”

“Don’t say it like they’re hostages—” Kevin snatched the paper back, “They’re terms of service. You like those, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but do we really need that many? I mean, we’re negotiating a one-off special, not a whole series.”

And once again, Kevin cast his eyes towards the blue sky, “Mother Mary, help me,” he mumbled, before jumping into a tangent about self-respect, and how _ that _earned respect from the big-wigs at these giant corporations. Richie found himself, in an out-of-body way, wishing he was half as passionate about anything as Kev was about contract negotiations. 

As Kevin continued to talk, Richie slumped back in his chair, the din of NYC surrounding him just like the early-autumn heat. Even with his third cup of coffee in front of him, Richie found it hard to keep his eyes open, eyelids heavy to the sound of Kevin droning on and on and on. He knew though, that if he closed his eyes, there would only be cold, and darkness, and that same, haunting sepia tinge that was painted over his dreams like wax. So he let his shoulder drop, and his eyes focus on the dark ring his coffee mug had stained on the white tablecloth, and somewhere, in the distance, he could have sworn he heard something pop.

IV

“Eddie!” He was in the cave, his hand on Eddie’s cheek. Eddie’s lifeless eyes looked down at the ground, grey and unmoving, unseeing. Richie felt the hot tears spill over, the desperation bunching in his throat, swirling like storm clouds. He had to go, but Eddie—he couldn’t leave without Eddie.

And that’s when Eddie’s eyes snapped up, still grey, still unseeing. Richie felt himself being sucked backwards, no, Bill and Ben weren’t pulling him, it was something else. Like a vacuum, he was moving away from Eddie, but he fought. Dug his heels into the sand and rocks around him, fighting to stay with those eyes. Eddie’s mouth opened, his lips twisted into something; a word? But the pull was too strong, and Richie was too far away to hear, the light growing dimmer and dimmer, until he sat up in bed. He was screaming Eddie’s name.

His chest heaved. His nostrils flared as his hot breath rushed out in gasps. It felt so real, so fucking _ real _. Richie pushed his bangs out of his eyes, once again matted with sweat. Against his forehead, he could feel his hand shaking. Eddie had never…Well, he never did much of anything, but now, it was like the dream was moving around him. Sticky and glossy, slow but rolling ahead, and something did not want Richie to hear Eddie’s words.

Richie pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his forehead on them. He couldn’t shake the idea that perhaps, somehow, this was Pennywise. The clown was dead though, right? So how could it be? It wasn’t like the last time, when the clown slithered away; he was gone. The head was cut from the body; dead. Really, really dead. But, if it wasn’t the clown, what was it?

Richie could practically hear the words of his LA shrink in his head. The man was exactly what you would picture a therapist to look like; beige incarnate. His voice sounded like he was constantly suffering from hay fever, and he kept an embroidered handkerchief in his front pocket, right next to where his glasses dangled on a chain. He would sniff, clear his throat, and ask Richie why he was convinced his dreams meant anything at all. Perhaps they were just what they said on the tin; nightmares. People had that, right? After traumatic events? And losing an old friend in such an awful way, well, there were worse things to suffer from than bad dreams. 

Worse things, like not being able to sleep one damn night without losing his goddamn mind. Richie moved back the covers and stepped out of bed, the red glow of the alarm clock proclaiming it to be just past three in the morning. He padded to the bathroom where, in the dark, he spilled three melatonin tablets into the palm of his hand. A part of him longed for his party days, when he was twenty and didn’t care about anything but people liking him. Back then, he would chew Vicodin like candy, and wash it down with a rum and coke. Now, though, he was older, and long were the days of trying to impress his weed guy at a party. No, melatonin would have to do the trick, and if it didn’t, Benadryl and a finger of whiskey. 

God, he needed to sleep. He could feel it seeping into his bones now, and it was a dark and nagging ache that could only be cured by the one thing that escaped him. He would find sleep, Richie promised himself, one way or another.

V

“Eddie…” It was cold, and a chill was buzzing up and down his spine like a current. 

Richie was awake, technically, but he could still hear his own voice, echoing in his head, pleading to his best friend. It was just past one in the morning, and Richie was curled up in one of his armchairs, staring out at the flickering lights of NYC. In one hand, he held an empty lowball glass, having already finished the two fingers of whiskey he had poured himself earlier. 

It was a week later, a solid seven days after he vowed to find sleep, and Richie was convinced he was going mildly insane. Every single night, the looping nightmare was worse than the last, but somehow cut short. The less time Richie stayed with Eddie in those nightmares, the worse he felt upon awakening. He felt cold, and at times, his hand would be freezing, flashes of ice-shards prickling under his skin where Eddie had been holding his hand. And now it was so bad, here he was, sitting up, too scared to close his eyes and face the same sorrowful face he saw every night. The same deep, earthy eyes turned a washed-out grey.

Because he deserved this, right? There is no way he should have left Neibolt without Eddie, they could have gotten him out, but no, they—_ Richie _—had left him. He had left him in the humid, icy darkness of the cave, while he and the others ran, and they healed, and their lives went on.

“We all healed…” Richie said, rubbing his forefinger over the lip of his lowball. “We all…” Something caught in his throat, and he sat the glass down on the rug before flipping over his hand. Where once, there had been an ugly, gashed scar, there way only smooth skin.

Richie leaned forward, feeling like his hands were on fire, and pulled over his laptop. _ Healed… _The computer booted up, and Richie flipped to his browser, typed several phrases into the search engine before getting somewhere. 

Benadryl, yeah, he knew that one. Melatonin, Xanax and Ativan, others he was familiar with. But there was also Valerian root, and Reishi mushrooms, coupled with theanine and tryptophan, natural remedies for sleep that forum boards and housewives raved gave them the best sleep of their lives. If that didn’t do it, then there were also sleep podcasts for deep dreaming, ASMR that was rumored to help with lucid dreaming.

The prospect of lucid dreaming had caused Richie to jolt back, shutting his laptop with a definitive snap. He moved it away from himself and stood, with weak knees, and shuffled into the kitchen with leaden legs to pour himself another drink. He finished it in one motion, and took his phone out of his pocket. 

_ Kevin: _

_ About that hookup. How much? _

_ —Rich _

He sent the text off to Kevin, not expecting to hear anything until the morning. A brief pause and then ten minutes later, several ASMR and lucid dreaming podcasts were downloaded onto his phone. Like dry ice, something terrible and cold settled in the pit of his stomach, climbing up and up until it threatened to fog over his lips.

What Richie had realized, with a frustration that nearly choked him, was that, perhaps, Eddie had healed too. Like the scars on their hands, now that Pennywise was dead, perhaps…Richie squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes. It was insane. Crazy. There was no way this could be happening, and yet the very thing inside of him that told him that Pennywise was dead, was the same thing that whispered, however softly, that Eddie was not. That Eddie was out there, and not just anywhere; he was in Richie’s dreams. Talking to him.

VI

Richie woke to the tandem sound of his heart pounding and a fist hammering at his door. He was sprawled across his bed diagonally, one headphone still lulling in his ear, the whisper of the podcast barely audible over the din coming from his living room. It took about thirty seconds to realize that the sharp rapping echoing through his apartment meant there was someone _ actually at the door _, and he jumped up so fast he nearly tripped himself in his haste. 

“Didn’t think you were gonna answer.” Kevin bustled in, and the smell of greasy breakfast food followed. 

“Time is it?” Richie yawned, slowly becoming aware of the fact that he was wearing nothing but an old shirt and some boxers, and that his breath must smell like shit. Kevin didn’t seem to notice, or care, as he took a coffee cup out of the cardboard holder. 

“9:30, my friend. Rise and shine!” He pulled out a chair and gestured for Richie to sit. Richie did, and pulled one of the bags of food towards him, snatching out what looked to be a plate of eggs and sausage. 

“Oh, before I get too far—” Kevin held up one finger, digging through his jacket pocket. He pulled out an orange pill bottle, throwing it at Richie. It hit Richie’s chest, and he just managed to catch it on his lap before it rolled on the floor. “Early Christmas present. Or, 300 bucks. Whatever. Just promise me one thing, kid?”

Kevin was probably only older than Richie by ten years. Still, Richie nodded, “What is it?”

“Get a prescription. I know I offered but, I was thinking.” He pulled out the chair opposite to Richie, “This new special is gonna be big, you know? Can’t uh,” his eyes flashed up to Richie’s almost sheepishly, “Can’t blow this one.”

“You know, I don’t usually plan on when and where to blow something.” He took a bite of the eggs, which were still hot, “The blowing happens organically. Spontaneously.”

“Right. I’m just—I’m just saying,” Kevin held his hands up in front of his chest, almost like he was surrendering, “Let’s nip this in the bud, alright?”

Richie nodded, “Right.”

“Anyways!” He clapped his meaty hands together, and the sound reminded Richie he did, in fact, have three drinks the night before, and yes, he was 40. He took a long drink of the black coffee. “The company is still in bidding.”

“We don’t have a distributor yet?”

“No, no, but here’s the thing: they’re fighting. HBO, Netflix—”

“_ What _ ?” Richie’s eyebrows hit his hairline. _ Really _? He had done one TV special, a year ago, but not with these big studios. No one had ever fought over him…He took another sip of his coffee, hoping to ease some of his nausea.

“That’s right, Rich! We hit it big time. They love the premise, think the thing about the skit within the standup is genius. Netflix is willing to pay top billing, and HBO—fuck, if I read you the numbers…”

Richie put his coffee cup down and ran his hands over his face. Top billing. Big numbers. “This is going to be your big break, kid. I know it.” Kevin continued in the background. 

“This coffee is shit.” Richie said abruptly, standing up so quickly that the chair wobbled next to him. Kevin just gave him that same, placid face he usually gave Richie when he started acting weird, the face that said: _ diva _. Richie was partially grateful for it, the resigned dismissal, because when he trod into the kitchen, Kevin didn’t follow.

Truth was, the coffee wasn’t bad, but Richie needed to get out of there, for fear that he was going to puke at any second. The silence of the kitchen didn’t help, though, and the nausea continued to roll over him until he was doubled over the sink, splashing cold water on his face and in his mouth. 

When he stood up and dried his face, he grabbed a towel that he didn’t notice had a cherry pattern on it until he pulled back, eyes only able to focus extra close-up without his glasses. It was baby blue, and the cherries stood out in sunny, happy shades, which reminded him of a photo Bev text him of her and Ben two weeks ago.

She had been wearing a similar cherry pattern, the bright fruit matching her hair, shimmering in the late afternoon (or was it early morning?). Her smile was all white teeth and freedom, and next to her, Ben held her by the waist, sporting the same love-struck smile. They were…happy. 

Beverly was like a completely different person now. Or, she was exactly the same person, but the one Richie had known in high school; shoulder-punches and “C’mon Trashmouth” and the smell of menthol and vanilla, not at all the small, world-weary bodysnatcher that had slipped into her skin after Derry. Now, 27 years later, late nights on the phone with her perky voice lighting up Richie’s living room: _ “Yeah, I quit. Told him to take my shares, sell my closet: anything. Gave him a PO box for the divorce papers. I’m done, Richie. I’m free.” _ Her sigh was choked, but laughter bubbled forth soon after.

Ben, too, was making a change. Sailing with the love of his life to Spain, packing up and leaving his home to the care of one of his employees, who perhaps had been in need of housing for some time. Bill was in the process of his separation also, and a move, mirroring Mike. The last Mike and Richie talked, he was still in Derry, “_ wrapping up loose ends _”, but had already bought a condo near Cocoa Beach. 

And Richie…What did Richie have to show from his last six weeks? Moved to New York, yeah, but it wasn’t like his life was any different. It was still the same old schtick; wake up, laze around, talk to his manager, agonize over his work. If you were someone looking in from the outside of Richie’s life, you would have never suspected he had battled a killer clown mere weeks ago. Nothing would tip you off to this, unless you were with him at night, and Richie certainly wasn’t bringing anyone back now that—now that the nightmares were unending.

There was also the matter of the realization Richie had while in Derry: the realization that he wasn’t exactly as straight as his acts would imply. Which was kind of a big deal, in Richie’s opinion, considering that sort of explained why he hadn’t been able to hold onto a stable relationship for the past, oh, twenty years or so. He had dated women, even _ loved _ women, but there was always something wrong, and Richie would find reasons to end the relationships before they even began, fidgeting guiltily as he delivered the news to yet another beautiful, smart, talented woman. “It’s not you, it’s me.” Yeah, that was rich.

And, more confusing, the nights after these breakups, spent in bars, going home with men who he reasoned were feminine enough. Always tiny, the brightest light in the room, with a smart mouth who would hold him down, tell him what to do. Smudges of bruises on his hips, his wrists in the morning, things that were explained away with the Aspirin he swallowed.

They hadn’t mattered, at least not before Derry. They had been flings, flights of fancy he blamed on his broken, bleeding heart, “He reminded me of her, her dark eyes and hair, her _ fire _.” These were easily brushed under the rug, such small inconveniences that there was no fire to worry about, only the smolder of doubt, of questions Richie forced himself to ignore, until they were all thrown back in his face. The Kissing Bridge. The arcade. The token. 

So what if he was gay? Wasn’t it 2016? People were cool with that; “Hey everyone, I’m gay, and you’re finding out that fun little piece of news right along with me!”. And they would laugh, right along with Richie! It was a good thing, until their faces turned dark, and their eyes turned red, and their teeth—they were everywhere, everywhere—

Richie doubled over the sink again, dry heaving. 

“Rich?” Kevin’s voice, echoing from the dining room, and then the sound of feet padding in behind him. Richie just had enough time to slip his glasses back on. “Rich. You okay, man?”

“M Fine.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Jesus, dude, I didn’t think the coffee was _ that _bad.”

“It wasn’t.” Richie shook his head. The light in the kitchen vibrated. “Still feeling a bit sick.”

Kevin raised an eyebrow, stepping back and moving his eyes up and down the length of Richie. “Rich…” A heavy hand on his shoulder, “What’s goin’ on?”

There was no way he could tell Kevin, could he? That the very thought of performing in front of so many, now that he was practically a different person, sacred the absolute shit out of him. So, he brought his hand up, and with the back of his wrist, brushed Kev’s hand off his shoulder. 

“Really, man, it’s not that serious.”

Kevin narrowed his eyes, “It’s my job to make sure you’re okay.”

“And you’re doing it.” Richie was turned away now, grabbing a glass out of the cabinets and filling it with tap water.

“So puking into the sink is a-okay? Right, sure bud.”

“Kev.” His head was aching, pain going from his molars, right up to the crown of his head. He could feel every pulse of blood behind his eyes, hear every beat of his heart, hammering in his ears. 

“You know I don’t like lecturing you, but c’mon kid, you need to—”

“Kevin! Would you drop it?!” And it wasn’t until Kevin took a step back that Richie realized he was shouting. The thrum in his ears was so loud, it was hard for him to hear anything. Around them, early morning light filtered in through the window, and dust motes danced between them, unaware of the conflict. For the next few seconds, there was only the sound of city traffic outside.

“I’m—” Richie sat down the glass. “I’m sorry.”

Across from him, Kevin sighed, “What do you need, Rich?”

“I don’t…” God, and here he was, throat twisting, a lump in his throat he was so familiar with at this point, it was like a secondary piece of anatomy. He turned away and looked out the window, trying to calm down by counting cars. One. Two. Red. Black. “I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s words for it right now.”

“Then take a few days off.” Kevin’s voice after a brief pause. “Get your head straight. Get some rest. And I’ll, I’ll—” He spoke louder when Richie went to protest, “handle everything on my end. Nothing you need to do right now anyways, besides sit there and look pretty.”

Richie chuckled, and wiped the corner of his eye with his thumb, “That’s kind of a tall order. Pretty? Where do I start?”

“Right, don’t strain yourself with that one.” And his smile reminded him of Mike, a smile that settled in your stomach, and told you things might be okay, even when it was a lie. Richie was okay with that lie, for then. 

VII

Another three days went by, and Richie awoke one morning with the most intense wave of nausea he had ever felt in his life. He ran to the bathroom, and dropped to his knees on the cold tile, and retched into the bowl of the toilet until the contents of his stomach were summarily evicted. Grossly enough, it was mostly purple stained, because Richie had finally had enough; chugged cough syrup the night before and thought, however darkly, that if it killed him, at least the dreams would stop. 

The Ativan from Kevin hadn’t helped. Yeah, it put him to sleep, but as far as changing the dream, no dice. Eddie was still a mute, only able to work out Richie’s name before something happened, and the dream popped like one of the clown’s stupid red balloons. Though last night, finally, with his blood pumping cough syrup through his system, in the deepest sleep he thought he had ever been in, it changed. Holy fuck, it had changed.

Not much, only a bit, but it was a shift. Richie made it right up until the end of the dream that time, when his friends left, and all that was left was him, and Eddie, and the ashes of the clown swirling around their heads. Eddie’s dead body, interspersed with memories of their sleepovers, the days before their lives ended. There had been a feeling of wrongness, though, something so profound that Richie had practically choked on it. Even more evident was the fact that, which Richie hadn’t noticed at first, they weren’t in the same cave that Eddie died in. 

It took him a few minutes to realize it, but once he realized, it was unmistakable. Wherever he was, whether in the dream, or…somewhere else, he was not under Neibolt. The air was tinged wrong, and the walls weren’t the right color, and the spikes in the middle? One of them was missing, fuck, Richie had spent hours, weeks of his life in this dream, he _ knew _ what that thing looked like. And it was wrong, which meant the whole thing was wrong. 

Richie leaned forward, resting his head on the cool edge of the toilet, feeling his temples pulse. But God, if he didn’t feel better than he had in weeks! Because Eddie, his best friend, his childhood crush, his long-forgotten confidant, had talked to him, “_ Richie, I’m—” _and Richie knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what he had to do next.

_ “The closer to Derry, the stronger the memories. _ ” Mike had said. And fuck it all if Richie was going to stay in his apartment, drinking cough syrup until he killed himself. He hadn’t shrunk away when Mike called him, and he, _ Richie _ , had been the one to lead the victory chant “ _ Let’s kill this fucking clown” _. And now, after wiling away two months, running back and forth between memories, from his dreams, from his stupid fucking feelings, he was resolute. There was nothing to be done but face the problem head on. Because if there weren't any answers in Derry, then there was closure, which, if Richie didn’t owe that to himself, he sure as shit owed it to Eddie. 

“Eddie!” Richie was twelve again, and the warm summer light was still _ just _ peaking through the angry storm clouds above them. The air smelled like copper, the tang like he just sucked on a nickel, the fool’s tell of a bad storm about to hit. The bone-deep feeling was setting in quick, and not two seconds later, a fat drop of rain fell and landed smack in the middle of Richie’s glasses, which spurred him to peddle that much faster. 

“Ugh, Eddie! Hurry the fuck up!”

“Shut the fuck up, Trashmouth!” Eddie wasn’t far behind him, his voice carried away by the wind that was slowly picking up. They were heading back from Stan’s, already running late according to the phone call from Eddie’s mom, and the rain was threatening to spill over at any moment. Eddie was always more careful on his bike than Richie, just by a bit, which put him a smidge behind.

“I’m gonna beat you back to your mom’s, and then she’s going to let me in, and not you—!” He cut through one of the empty lots near Eddie’s road, a shortcut which took roughly a minute off their time. It was dusty, though, and full of rocks, and if you were going to go through on your bike, you had to be careful. Richie had learned this the hard way.

“Be my guest, Tozier!” Eddie yelled, before several more drops hit Richie’s face, then several more, then more after that. 

“Why do you always have to be so _ slow, _ Eddie? C’mon,” his best Michael Knight impression, “Gimme all ya got, Eds!”

There was the sound of thunder overhead, and that was when the heavens broke. Torrents of rain smacked Richie’s face, beating back his hair and soaking through his shirt. He whooped into it, pushing forward against the force, just as Eddie let out a scream behind him. 

“Wh—” Richie looked over his shoulder for a fraction of a second, just in time to see Eddie tumbling to the ground. Another earth-shaking rumble, and there was no longer sunlight peeking through the clouds, only the flash of lightning overhead. “Eddie!” 

Richie pulled back on his breaks, so fast his bike skidded and he was forced to jump off, lest he eat a face-full of rocks. The dirt of the empty lot was already saturated, and the mud was kicked up the back of his legs and soaking through his trainers with how fast he ran to his friend, his knees now also covered as he sank down next to Eddie.

“Eds, are you okay?” He asked, shouting over the hum of the rain and thunder. 

Eddie sat up, the back of his shirt and shorts covered in mud and dirt. “I’m fine—” But Richie’s eyes darted fast from his knees to his elbows, the side of his face: all skinned and bleeding. In the corners of his eyes, there were tears, tears which Richie knew they were much too old to be shedding.

“God, you wiped the fuck out.”

“Shut up! My mom’s gonna kill me…” Eddie touched a fingertip to one of his skinned knees, already beginning to bruise, and made a face. “My mom…” He gave a pathetic sniffle.

“We’ll go back to my house!” Richie blurted, a knot forming in his stomach at the sight of his best friend, tattered and torn as he was. “We’ll go back to my house, and my mom can get you cleaned up! She’ll call your mom too, say she invited you for dinner—hey.” The rain was dripping down Eddie’s bangs, making the blood on his cheek run down his neck. He looked miserable. “I’m sorry. I thought you could keep up.”

“I—” a small hiccup, “I hit a rock. Why did we have to take the shortcut, asshole?”

“You were the one in a hurry to get home.” And Richie grimaced, knowing that probably wasn’t the best thing to point out. His knees ached under him, and he was becoming colder by the second.

“Thought you weren’t gonna come back.” Eddie said, so softly it was almost a whisper. Mumbled to himself more than anything, a confession to the storm. He was shivering too, clutching one bruised wrist and looking away from Richie. 

Richie sighed, exasperated, but fond. Of course Eddie thought that. “I’ll always come back for you, Eds,” Richie smiled, reaching out a hand to ruffle Eddie’s wet hair, “Always.”

Two hours later, Richie had a bag packed, and was driving out of New York City with nothing but a feeling, a feeling that was all too familiar to what he felt several months ago: he was going home.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooooooo that was a long first chapter, and I'm sorry. I had a lot of ground I wanted to cover before I jumped into the meat of the story, but most will be shorter in the coming weeks. If you want to see more of this, please leave kudos and comments, it really motivates me. 
> 
> More of all of The Losers to come, I promise~


	2. Chapter Two

_“When you think the night has seen your mind / That inside you're twisted and unkind / Let me stand to show that you are blind / Please put down your hands / ‘Cause I see you” — _I’ll Be Your Mirror, The Velvet Underground

I

Driving back to Derry felt worlds different than the first time. The first time had been a disassociated haze, stumbling out of the airport and renting the flashiest car Richie could get his hands on. Perhaps he had done it as a distraction, or perhaps it felt right, the thread of his old, shallow life keeping him bobbing in the current like a buoy. Richie Tozier, famous comedian, would drive a sports car. Richie Tozier, famous comedian, wouldn’t give a fuck about a tiny town in the middle of bum-fuck Maine. Richie Tozier, comedian, wouldn’t have sweaty palms at the mere thought of stepping foot back in that town.

Now, Richie was driving down 95, the colors of the trees in peak season fanning outwards and around him on either side. Early October in New England offered something California never did: change. The view of fresh streams he knew from experience were cold, and grass that once grew to knee-heights browned from early morning frost. Several times, Richie was tempted to pull over in one of the towns he passed, teeming with early Halloween decorations, bales of hay and bunches of dried flowers adorning sidewalks. He was temped to stop, unpack his bag, and never look back, but he pressed on, driving as the sun moved from one side of the sky to the other. 

The hours were melancholy, filled with bittersweet memories interspersed with the small-town backdrop. The first time back, all the memories had been horrifying, or some big, important event, the sentinel moments of Richie’s life he had long forgotten: graduation. His sixteenth birthday. The Clown. Now, there were smaller, finer memories, like the last grains of sand in an hour glass falling through: the time him and Stanley drove through the night to go to the beach. The time Bill needed a ride to some writing convention in Massachusetts. And, most bittersweet of all, the last goodbye Richie and Eddie shared before Eddie was forgotten. 

Eddie had been forced by his mother to attend Derry Community College for his first semester, so when they headed to NYU, Eddie’s stuff tied down to the roof of Richie’s beater, Mike snoring in the backseat, it had been freezing. Teeth-chattering, hands held to the vents freezing. As they took one last stop by the Tozier house, Richie’s mother had pressed a thermos of hot tea into his hands and, holding up a finger to stop Richie from jumping off the porch, yelled for Abby to grab the quilt off his bed. 

“Never know when you might need it. Is your car going to be warm enough?” She said, and her soft fingers brushed his. 

Richie shrugged, bringing the quilt into his chest. It was frayed along the edges, and smelled like home; like lavender detergent and skin. Warm. “Dunno. Guess you and dad could buy me a new one.”

Her answering grin was sharp, a face he had seen himself make in photographs, “Guess you could save up some of the tips you’re getting from those bars.” And she huffed a small laugh. It was funny, but Richie never thought about how much he and his mother looked alike until she was laughing; wide eyes, prominent front teeth, and wild, dark curls. His dad had given him his long nose and square jaw, but the right-sided quirk of his smile? How one eye crinkled more than the other when he was laughing? That was all his mom. 

“Touché, mother.” He hopped off the porch, throwing her a salute and bouncing towards the car where Mike and Eddie were already huddled. In front of him, his breath came out in small, white puffs, “Call you when I can!”

As predicted, not thirty minutes after being on the road, Eddie had stolen the quilt and wrapped himself in a cocoon to rival an actual moth. Richie had half a mind to make a crack about it, or tell him to throw it back to Mike (who had the uncanny ability to fall asleep the moment he entered a moving vehicle), but he didn’t. He watched as Eddie pressed his forehead to the passenger window, and doodled little stick figures into the fog he created from his breath and body heat. In the background, the strident voice of Nico whispered from the cassette player: _I’ll be your mirror, I’ll be your mirror…_

II

Richie decided against staying at the Derry Townhouse. Sure, it was cheap, and he knew right where it was, smack between the strip and the highway out of town, but he couldn’t do it, and not just because of the shitty water pressure, or the odd stains on the sheets, or the musty carpet. It was because every time he thought about stepping foot in that inn, he knew he would think about Eddie; how he had grown into his looks. His tanned skin that made Richie wonder what he liked, what got him outside. It made him think of his voice, and just how deep it had become, but with no lack of fire from their youth.

He checked into a newer hotel, one right outside the strip. He could already hear the people of Derry complaining about it: too gaudy, too big, too new. _What did Derry need this hunk of metal for? Didn’t they already have the Inn? _Knowing the residents would hate it was almost a comfort, one that glowed softly in Richie’s chest, and helped him put one foot in front of the other. 

Inside the new hotel, it was impeccably sterile, with large vases of fake flowers and watercolors just inoffensive enough to placate even the most hungover businessman. Jazz music, or some elevator-imitation of jazz, floated from a speaker somewhere, and not a single soul sat in the lobby, spartanly furnished with black leather chairs. It was cold, and Richie’s footsteps echoed in the lobby, despite it being on the smaller side. The echos made it feel cavernous though, and deserted, like Richie was the only person in the whole world inside this hotel, as though the roots of Derry had not yet taken its hold on its white walls and marble floors.

“Any rooms open?” Richie asked when he reached the front desk. A teen girl with limp, purple hair like seaweed and black eyeshadow smudged haphazardly over her lids was the only person at the desk, and she snapped her gum at him as she looked up from her phone. From it, there was the tinny sound of a game she was obviously much more interested in than Richie. 

“Do you have a reservation?” Her name tag read ‘Amanda’, but she looked more like a ‘Mandy’, and Richie wasn’t sure why. Perhaps Mandy sounded a bit grungier, a bit dirtier than Amanda, which to him implied blonde hair and pigtails. He eyed the bat sticker next to the last A in her name.

“No, but something has to be available, right?” Richie shifted from one foot to the other, and upon seeing her stony expression, continued, “I mean, it’s Derry for Christ’s sake. How much traffic can there be?” And he punctuated the sentence with a small laugh, hoping to budge her expression in the slightest. 

Amanda seemed unimpressed though, and looked away from Richie and over to the desktop to her right, presumably sifting through the hotel’s rooms. “Dunno.” She shrugged, “Been pretty packed since all the kiddy murders. Reporters, camera crews. Been a frickin’ circus around here.”

Richie felt the blood drain from his face, and the tips of his fingers went cold. “Kiddy murders?” He tried to keep his voice from wavering, but there was the unmistakable feeling of time slowing, of the room starting to spin and blur around him.

“_What_?” Amanda looked up from where she was typing, chipped, black nails and hands wrapped in fingerless gloves poised over the keyboard, “Dude, don’t tell me you haven’t heard. It’s been on CNN and everything. Everywhere!”

“I…” Richie couldn’t think of what to say. It made sense, in theory; once the clown was dead, there was nothing to obscure the memories of those afflicted. The cobwebs brushed away, like rousing the old boxes in an attic, and dusting off old photo albums. Something you were there for, but forgot. Still, it felt unreal somehow, like the Losers were the only ones meant to remember, as though it were a secret that only they were strong enough to keep, a vigil only they upheld through night terrors and sweat soaking through their shirts, down their backs. Pennywise didn’t fit into the world outside of Derry, for all its vitality and movement. He didn’t belong.

“Yeah, this guy broke out of a mental hospital down the street and killed a couple of kids. Turns out it was tied to a bunch of murders from like, thirty years ago that nobody ever connected. Some guy, God, what was his name?” Her thin brows pinched, trying to remember.

“Bowers?” Richie said, and the name scratched the inside of his throat like sandpaper. The weight of the axe in his hands. The blunted sound of metal on bone on tissue. The blood. His stomach curled at the thought of the blood, pooling around Bower’s head as Richie stood over him, watching it spread with a sticky slowness across the floor.

“That’s it!” She nodded, snapping her fingers. “Henry Bowers. Apparently killed a bunch of kids as a teenager, and then his dad.”

“Sounds like a real piece of work…” Was all Richie could say, focusing hard on his hands where they were on the counter, trying to ground himself, to stop his stomach from churning. 

“Oh, that’s not even the worst part.” Amanda was alight now, and Richie judged she was taking way too much pleasure in recounting the details to him. Her gray eyes danced under her thick, mascara-coated lashes, and Richie wished that some part of his life wasn’t just another television special for bored teens.

“The worst part is—” she continued, “That a bunch of people say they never saw the guy at the scene—well, never saw him looking like _him_. They say he was dressed up in like, this clown costume. Isn’t that fucked up?”

“Y-yeah…” A trickle of cold sweat down Richie’s back, “That’s really fucked up.”

“You know, it’s too John Wayne Gacy if you ask me. You want to kill kids and get away with it?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, looking back at the computer, “Don’t run around town dressed up like you escaped the circus. Anyways, we _do_ have a queen bed available.”She looked back to him and raised an eyebrow. Wordlessly, Richie nodded, and slid his credit card across the counter to her.

“Oh, sweet!” Her voice was faint, an echo like his footsteps in the lobby from moments before, the sound muffled by Richie’s falling, falling backwards into that old, familiar fear, “Richard Tozier, like the comedian? Nice.”

III

The Inn was an old thing, a relic of New England’s own Victorian era, with spires shooting upwards towards the sky, and the white, lead paint chipping off the sides in large flakes. Once, as a child, Richie had thought the large building a castle, with its sweeping expanse and gossamer curtains that billowed outwards in the summer heat. Now, it was just an old Inn to Richie, one that smelled distinctly of mildew and possibly piss. It made his nose wrinkle and he found out, once he went to wash his hands, that the sink’s water pressure left something to be desired. Richie couldn’t stand to think of what the shower had in store for him. 

Richie and the rest of the Losers had done what anyone else would have done in wake of the revelation that they were all destined to die horrible, gruesome deaths: they got exceedingly drunk. Bev doled out shots of whiskey like a seasoned barkeep, keeping the alcohol flowing as their conversation went from grim to the fact that Ben could tie a cherry stem with his tongue. Richie’s head had been spinning from the liquor, wrapped in a familiar, alcoholic blanket of warmth, but he kept drinking, kept cracking his glass against Bev and Ben and Bill’s, until finally, Eddie stood up.

“No more for you, Eddie Spaghetti?” Bev giggled, and she wiggled the bottle in his direction. Her cheeks were pink and high on her face, smiling wide, and tilting her head to one side, exposing a long, graceful neck. Richie didn’t miss how beautiful she had become over the decades, her young, boyish edges sanding down into something finer, more elegant. An antique among the ruins of their old bones and gray hairs. Some things about her remained slightly masculine though; a strong jaw, the set of her shoulders, the coarse edge of her voice which jumped out as she drank more and more. As the night wore on, he caught the eyes of Bill and Ben lingering on her, raking over her like dragging the bottom of a lake for a body. He wondered what she dredged up for them, or what they had left for her, all those years ago.

Eddie was obviously drunk, if his four previous shots were anything to go by. He shrugged, putting his own glass down on the coffee table in front of him, “I think I’m good. Big day tomorrow, right?” he swayed on the spot, knee brushing Richie’s, and causing Richie to flinch away. He looked down at Richie, eyebrows raised in question and abolishing any hope Richie had had that Eddie hadn’t noticed.

As Richie drank, it became apparent that there were two options when it came Eddie: to touch or not to touch. At The Jade, it had been obvious what the answer had been—touch, touch, touch. But as the night wore on, and the moon cast a soft light over Derry, Richie felt himself drawing inwards. The realization that Eddie wasn’t going to dissolve if he looked away, if he didn’t feel him. The realization that Eddie was a man now, and not just the disjointed longing Richie felt when he couldn’t sleep, the echo of brown eyes and soft laughter keeping him up, the hollow cave in his chest where he knew something once was. Eddie wasn’t thirteen, he was forty. Real. Solid. Eyes that looked back at Richie if he stared too long. It made his throat feel too tight, his skin feel too thin.

“Eddie’s right.” Mike stood as well, brushing off his jeans and snapping Richie out of his thoughts. “We don’t want to spend the entire day hungover.”

“Y-y-yeah.” Bill nodded, “W-we should head to bed.” And so they had gone, each to their respective rooms, with only hours to sleep before dawn. The floorboards of the house creaked under their weight, and shuddered and groaned around them even once they were behind closed doors.

Gathering up the courage to brave the shower, Richie was taking off his shirt when he heard a knock at his door, sharp and quick. “Christ,” He rolled his eyes, pulling his 1998 _Be Here Now World Tour _tee back over his head and shuffling out of the bathroom. He was expecting Beverly, or maybe Bill, but instead Eddie waited, arms crossed and holding a bag. His hair was slightly mussed, like he had been running his hands through it.

“Running away together in the middle of the night?” Richie raised an eyebrow, and Eddie rolled his eyes, a leftover gesture from childhood. “Didn’t take you for the romantic type.”

“There’s a lot you don’t—God.” Eddie huffed, and Richie felt slightly guilty for the quip. There was no reason to try and rile Eddie up, not about that sort of thing. “Whatever. My shower is broken or something. Can I use yours, or are you going to be weird about that, too?”

“Come right in, Eduardo.” Richie stepped back, allowing his friend into the room. He tried not to let the heat he felt earlier creep back into his brain, watching as Eddie moved to the shower, treading slowly to take in Richie’s room, judgmental eyes passing over his open suitcase and floor littered with clothes. While the 27 years apart had transformed Richie almost entirely, Eddie looked much the same. Same haircut, same clothes (minus the shorts), same set of his shoulders. He was a smidge taller now, and slightly wider, filling out in the chest but not much elsewhere. It was a punch in the gut, realizing all the men Richie had slept with in the past two decades could probably form a pretty decent Eddie Kaspbrak police lineup. 

“These rooms are disgusting.” Eddie sniffed, walking into the sickly light of the bathroom. 

“Eh, they’re not so bad.” Richie shrugged, and wondered why, exactly, he had followed Eddie to the bathroom.

“Not that bad? Richie, these carpets obviously haven’t been replaced in thirty years. And the bathrooms…there’s mildew in the floorboards, I just know it.”

Not for the first time that night, Richie felt a fond smile forming on his lips. “Remind me to never invite you to my apartment.” And he chuckled. God, he had missed that shrill voice. It was deeper than he remembered, but still just as fast, just as foul. It was the voice he would hear every so often in his head, a voice that brought back flashes of summer nights spent catching fireflies, and cold nights after temple sprawled out on his stomach, reading comic books in front of the heater. Back then, it never mattered if the fire behind Eddie’s voice had been directed at him; it kept him warm, one way or another.

Eddie stopped and sat his bag down on the tiled floor of the bathroom, rifling through it and producing three travel sized bottles. He sat them carefully inside of the tub, and then produced his own towel out of the bag. He looked an awful lot like the Tin Man to Richie, all stiff joints and angles; like he was walking on ice, or glass. Like, at any minute, the floor would give out. Something in Richie twinged at that thought, but he couldn’t remember why, not then.

“Do you think,” Eddie said after a second, nervously fiddling with the zipper on his jacket, “after all this, we’ll still remember each other?”

“Eddie…” Richie continued to stand in the doorway of the bathroom, unsure of how to proceed. Did he move ahead, and risk scaring Eddie away? Or did he pull back, and yank away any thread of connection that was between the two.

“It’s so hard, right now. I remember everyone, I remember you,” a meaningful glance in Richie’s direction, “but it’s like…” He pulled off his jacket and began folding it, “It’s like I’m looking at it through pebble glass, or—or, you remember those view masters we had as kids? The ones that clicked through and showed the photos? Well, it feels like that, only some photos are better than others, and some are punched out, or mangled, or—I don’t know.” He put his jacket into his bag with a sigh.

“That’s all Pennywise.” Richie said, once he remembered how to move his mouth, “Once he’s dead, we’ll—”

“What? Remember everything we forgot? Remember our whole fucking childhoods he took from us?” He paused, and took in a shaky breath, “Bring back Stan?”

“Don’t.” Richie held up a hand, wincing at how harsh he sounded. _Stan_…he couldn’t. He couldn’t think about Stan yet, dying alone in a bathtub. Everything felt too real to Richie but that…that was visceral. He couldn’t. Not yet. 

They were quiet for a moment, save for the sound of Eddie, fumbling with something in his bag and doing a very good job of avoiding Richie’s eyes. After a moment, though, he couldn’t help it, and Richie spoke up again. His throat was tight like in the parlor. Raw. “What do you remember?”

“I mean, the clown, but only bits. I remember that it was summertime, and that we, that I, well, I was scared, but I was also happy. And not in the little kid way, but really, deeply happy.” He sat down on the closed lid of the toilet and started to take off his socks, “I remember breaking my arm, and my mom, God, she flipped.”

“Boy, did she.” Richie crossed his arms stepped more into the bathroom, leaning back against the sink’s cold, porcelain lip.

“And,” Eddie chuckled, “you ate shit. Bill, he—he decked you.”

“He did! God, he did, didn’t he? That asshole.” He swore he could still remember the sting of the hit, the bite of Bill’s boney knuckle against his cheek. The way his sister Ester had held ice to his lip when he got home, and she promised not to tell their mom. 

“But we were okay. Eventually.”

Richie nodded. They were, for a while. But then Beverly moved in with her aunt in '90, and her letters stopped coming by the summer of 1991. Ben moved too, starting an early college program in Boston in the summer of ’93, and the remaining Losers never seemed to miss his absence, the same way they would come to forget each other soon after graduation. Flashes of memories, but none that ever stayed long enough to stick inside their brains. 

“And after that?” Richie said, looking up from where he was rubbing circles on the bathroom tiles with his toes. 

“What do you mean?” Eddie looked up too, and in his chest, Richie’s heart fluttered. Pretty, such pretty brown eyes. Richie had always been in love with those eyes, hadn’t he? Even when he couldn’t remember them, they were there, holding a place like a bookmark inside of him. He could map the constellations of Eddie’s freckles with his eyes closed, even when he couldn’t remember his name. His freckles weren’t as prominent anymore, camouflaged behind his tanned skin, but they were still there, light but enough for Richie to see.

Freckles. Pink lips, cold bitten and smooth. Suddenly, a wave of terror clamped down hard on Richie’s brain, and he was unable to do anything other than spit out the first words that popped into his head. “Nothing.” Hand fluttering in front of his face, brushing away his words like smoke“Just—anything.”

“Oh.” Eddie went back to looking at his feet, “I don’t know. It was all so long ago.”

“Yeah…” God, why had he felt full to bursting?

“I’m, uh. Going to take a shower, now.” Eddie’s voice, smaller now, floated to Richie.

Richie blushed hotter than ever, and all but threw himself off the sink, “Okay! I’ll be—” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, walking backwards out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. He mustered up a grin, and added, out of the corner of his mouth, “Let me know if you need any help, though.” Because Richie never learned how to stop talking.

“Beep, beep, asshole.” Eddie hissed, and perhaps it was a touch more venomous than Richie had been expecting. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised myself I would finish this fic, and now, with COVID preventing me from doing literally anything other than going to work and napping, I thought I would finally tackle this. This chapter is significantly shorter than chp 1, mostly because I got to about 15 pages and realized I wasn't even half done. So here's this! 
> 
> If you enjoy this, please let me know with a comment or kudos <3 It helps motivate me to keep going on this absolute beast of a fic.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Look! A chapter update that didn't take four months! Thanks for sticking with me. Hopefully updates will be churned out much faster now that I'm back on a roll. 
> 
> Quick warning for discussions of canon-typical violence, death, and PTSD. Uh, Richie is a mess.

“_I sensed my loss / Before I even learned to talk / And I remember my birthdays / Empty party afternoons won't come back_” — To Forgive, Smashing Pumpkins

“_How do I tell you I got here without getting trapped in the past?”_ — Anyway, Richard Siken

I

“Anywhere but the Orient.” Richie had joked over the phone when he called Mike, asking him to meet up for dinner. What he hadn’t considered, however, was that Mike was an introvert to the bone, and that a librarian-cum-clown scholar would not have the slightest idea where it was good to eat, even in the town he had spent the better part of three decades in. That’s how Richie ended up sitting by himself in the booth of a mom and pop’s pizzeria, waiting for Mike to show up as he braced himself against the smell of marinara sauce and lysol. 

“Richie!” Mike said happily ten minutes later, pulling Richie into a tight bear hug as kids screamed somewhere in the back of the restaurant. “Sorry.” He added, as he caught Richie flinching at the noise. They slid into opposite sides of the booth, which were upholstered with cracked, once-red vinyl that had been there as long as Richie could remember. The tabletop was old but made of solid wood, the same that had been there since the 80’s.

“It’s okay.” Richie shrugged, “My tinnitus needed a bit of encouragement.” Mike offered a hearty laugh. 

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t know if you would remember this place. We came here all the time, remember? After—”

“After those soccer matches, right? The ones Bill…” The memory niggled, unreachable at the back of his brain. Richie tried to scratch it, and only managed to ruffle the hair on the back of his head with one hand. 

“Bill’s mom made him join the indoor league in ’91 to get him out of the house. Personally, I think she did it so he would stop hanging out with us so much, but—”

“But we joined anyway! Ha!” Richie threw his head back. “Haystack’s mom had that Sedan she would pile us into, and just dump us into here like releasing the fuckin’ hounds, man. God, what a mess.”

“It was.” Mike nodded, dark eyes focused on Richie and brows slightly downturned. “Truthfully, Rich, I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon. What’re you doing up here?” Richie didn’t miss the way his voice softened at the last question. How, now that they were sitting, his eyes were drifting slightly south, to the purple rings under Richie’s own eye’s, to his unshaved stubble. 

“What, a guy can’t stop in and say hi to his friend?” Mike narrowed his eyes in that disapproving dad way he always did, even as a teen. As he did so, the waitress came by, depositing two menus and two glasses of water, which Richie grabbed at eagerly. “I, uh, moved to New York.”

“Bev told me.”

“Oh?” Richie took a sip of his water, feeling his mouth go dry.

“Well,” A flick of his wrist, “she told everyone. It was in the group chat.”

“Wh—there’s a group chat? Why wasn’t I invited?” 

“You were. You never accepted the invitation.” Mike chuckled, shrugging his shoulders, “Ask Beverly to send you another invite, and this time, don’t ignore it.”

“Sorry, man. You wouldn’t know, but it’s hard being this famous and desirable. Can’t always give my fans what they want.” Text already sent to Beverly: _Group chat? WTF add me!_

“Seriously, though, why New York?” Mike asked as Richie looked up from his phone. The other thing about Mike was how old his eyes looked. Not in the way of crow’s feet or jaundice, but the way they focused on him, how they chose to look in places Richie never would, and sought out answers he didn’t know were there, at least, on the outside of him. Now, they were piercing through Richie, but not unkindly. “I thought you liked California? 

“Nah, too hot. Got a farmer’s tan while waiting in traffic one day, which was weird because I was in an Escalade. And New York, you know, it’s got a real run-down, 90’s vibe to it, but it’s great for my line of work. Any studio I could want to work with is in like, ten minutes walking distance.”

“So it has nothing to do with the killer clown?” Mike put his hands down on the table, palms up, like he was opening himself up to Richie. “The major life change from two months ago?”

“I mean—” another sip of water. Somehow, with Mike, he didn’t feel as nauseous as he thought he would when discussing Pennywise. Maybe that was the key; strength in numbers. Or maybe it was the soft set of Mike’s jaw, and the cadence of his voice that was always gentle, always teasing out the result he wanted. Once, as kids, Mike had coaxed a kitten out from under his barn with only his voice, after all other methods had failed. “Everything’s about that now, right? You can’t just have something like that happen and not have it blow the rest of your life to smithereens. I mean, just look at—” he gulped, “Look at Bev! And Ben, too, God. And what about Bill, what’s he doing? What are _you_ doing?”

“I agree with you, Richie. Hey.” He reached out across the table and grabbed Richie’s hand where it was trembling. It was warm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, it’s…” Richie sighed and tried to pull in some of the humid air of the parlor, but in his peripherals, he saw their waitress approaching, and he snatched his hand away from Mike. Mike just looked at him, face unflinching. 

“We decided fellas?” The waitress asked, and thankfully, Mike took the burden upon himself to order a pizza for the both of them. She looked between them, her mouth pitched only slightly downwards before she smiled and walked away. Richie didn’t want to imagine what she thought about the two of them; knowing Derry’s history, it was probably grossly unflattering. He moved his hands under the table, wiping his palms on his jeans and keeping them there as he looked back up.

“Well go on.” Mike said, leaning back in the booth. Compared to Richie, Mike looked nearly reborn. His navy blue shirt was pressed and crisp, pushed up to his elbows to expose forearms toned from years of farm work. His hair only had specks of grey in it, while he kept his face shaved clean and smooth, making him look even younger. He was handsome, Richie realized, now that Mike wasn’t the one who was sleep deprived and going slightly mad. Richie looked back down at his thighs, which were much softer than they had been 30 years ago.

“Do you ever get nightmares?” Richie asked while still making eye contact with the grain of his blue jeans.

Mike sighed, a small, deflating noise, “All the time. Before this summer, I would dream Pennywise was chasing me, and I wouldn’t wake up until I fell out of bed.” Another sigh, “Got a lot of bruises that way. Had to pull my mattress onto the floor, sleep like that.”

“What about after, though? Did they…were they different?”

“Not really.” Richie looked up, and caught the tail end of Mike relaxing his shoulders in relief, “Actually, they’ve gotten better, I think.”

“What about dreams about…Eddie, or St—” a lump in his throat. For one very, convincing moment, Richie thought he was about to throw up on the floor of the pizza parlor. He swallowed and pushed on, fighting around the tightness, “Eddie or Stan?”

“Mmm.” Mike hummed, “Not really I guess? I can see like, their faces sometimes, in the background, but they’re more disembodied. Like I’m looking at a painting in the backdrop of a movie. I wouldn’t say they’ve ever been about them. Are you…” Mike tilted his head, attempting to snag Richie’s eyes, “Are you, Rich?”

Richie realized he had a choice. He could cower, tell Mike what he wanted to ‘_no, that was just some random question, pssh_.’ and move along. That, or he could—“Yeah.” He nodded, hair flopping into his eyes, “All the time. Eddie.”

“Eddie?” 

“Yeah, like—” he had to force himself to not grind his teeth, “Like dying. When he died. I dream about that.”

“Oh. Rich…” And God, Mike was so hellbent on touching him, he moved his foot forward under the table and nudged Richie’s own, the toes of their shoes clicking together. What had made Mike so tactile? Where Richie had grown in on himself, Mike had moved outwards, his influence a slow creeping ivy. 

“When my parents died, I had a lot of those dreams. That I was watching them—” his breath hitched, “_burn, _and I couldn’t do anything about it. Or, tell me if this is too much, but sometimes, I would save them, but then they would be mad at me? Or burst into flames anyways, and I…” He finally touched his own glass of water and brought it towards him, taking a drink from the sweating glass, “I started going to therapy. At first, my uncle got tired of me screaming at night, and he got me these pills that would put me to sleep. But once you all moved, and he died, I was on my own. Sink or swim.”

Richie let out a breath, “I didn’t know all this, Mike.”

Mike waved him off, “Why should you? I never told anyone. I started therapy, and it didn’t last long, a little over a year, but it helped. Helped with my parents at least.”

Richie nodded, bobbing his head and feeling suddenly lightheaded. 

“Have you talked to anyone, Rich? About these dreams?”

Richie chuckled, “I’m talking to you aren’t I? Are you—dude, no, I mean—” How? How was he going to say this without scaring Mike right out of the place?

“Anyone besides me? Someone with a medical background, maybe?”

The room was growing a bit fuzzy around the edges, “They’re not—I don’t think—” he wiped his palms on his jeans again, “I think they might not be like that. Like dreams. They are, but also, when I dream, it’s always the same thing? Over and over again? And that makes me think that, I don’t know—”

“That sounds a lot like PTSD.” Mike said softly. “That happens when we experience something so upsetting, our brain can hardly cope. Flashbacks, like war veterans get, except for it’s not flashbacks to war, it’s flashbacks to the event, whatever changed us.” His voice was growing softer the longer Richie listened, floating upwards between then and popping in the air somewhere over him, so that the words weren’t so much said to him, but at him. He was a live-wire in his seat, buzzing so violently with his own frequency, everything outside of it was incomprehensible. 

“It’s not.” Richie could only whisper, “It’s not. Mike, Eddie, he’s—I think there’s something he’s trying to tell me.” _God_, it wasn’t supposed to go like this. With Mike’s face warping across from him, one minute concern, the next, what Richie could only decipher as thinly veiled disgust. Horror. 

“Eddie is gone, Richie. I’m so, so sorry, Richie, but he is. But I can—”

“No! See—I thought that too! I thought they were dreams or nightmares or—or something! But they’re not. I was having them for weeks, okay? Weeks, and these dreams never changed, or they didn’t, until I started facing them.”

“Facing them?”

The collar of Richie’s shirt was beginning to feel too tight. “I started trying to lucid dream. To knock myself out, however I could. And it wasn’t until the night I tried—God, you’re gonna think I’m nuts, you think I’m crazy—” Mike opened his mouth to say something, but Richie plowed on, “—But I took cough syrup and Xanax, and maybe there was some alcohol mixed in, I don’t even remember at this point. But what matters to me is that he _spoke_ to me Mike. He spoke to me!” His words were spilling out, pressurized out of him at a dangerous velocity. But if he didn’t say this now, didn’t let the words rush out of him and crash between the two of them on the table, then Richie knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would never, ever tell Mike. It had to be ripped off all at once in one clean stroke. 

“W-what did he say?” And Richie didn’t miss the way his voice wavered. 

“My_ name_. He said my name.” Mike’s brows knitted together, heavy on his forehead, “A-and he was about to say something else, but something cut him off! He’s…” The waitress walked by, and, like Mike and Richie were in a detective movie discussing their secret case, their next ambush, Richie leaned forward and whispered, “He’s still alive.”

Mike sighed. Richie leaned back into his seat just as Mike moved forward, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. He produced a long, drawn out exhale through his nose, then waited several more nerve-wracking seconds before opening his eyes again. He kept his eyes on the table.

“What all did you say you took?”

“What?”

“What did you take…to help you_ talk_ to Eddie?” Mike sounded exhausted. Flat. Lifeless.

“Um. Just, you know, stuff to help me sleep. Stuff you could literally find in anyone’s medicine cabinet.” He was coming down from the high. Still buzzed, but now, he felt the clammy sweat drying on his forehead. He felt the way the tips of his fingers prickled with adrenaline; out of sorts and foreign. 

“Xanax?”

“Oh come on, everyone has Xanax nowadays. They hand them out at fucking McDonald’s.”

“Cough syrup, alcohol?”

“Melatonin, reishi, Benadryl, Ambien, Scotch, Bourbon, red wine years 2007 and 2009. You want to card me while we’re at it?” 

“I’m not trying to be judgmental, Rich. This isn’t normal though, okay? You’re…scaring me.”

“And you think I’m not scared?” Richie felt his lip turn up, sneering in Mike’s direction. At his perfect face, his patchwork life, his perfect plans for his perfect future, “I’m fucking terrified. I’m only doing what I know how to do.”

“I know, I know, hey.” He tapped their feet together under the table once more, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean to dismiss you. Grief…grief changes people, though, and most of the time, it’s not for the best. I don’t want to lose you to it, Richie, not when I just got you back.”

And for some reason, the softness in his brown eyes, the gentleness with which he canted their feet together, the beautiful, soft lilt of his voice; it all caused a squall to rage inside Richie, until it burst forth, snapping like lightening between them, “_You_ have no _idea_ what this kind of grief is like.”

Mike reeled back, eyes wide. 

“I mean—!” And as sudden as storms began, so Richie’s ended. A candle blown out. “I’m sorry, Mike. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry. _God_—” But the damage was done. He had said what he said, and there was no changing the way Mike’s face fell as his friend, one of his best friends, threw everything he had trusted him with back in his face. He felt like everything around him was fracturing. Was this it? Was this what Eddie wanted?

In front of him, Richie’s phone buzzed. “That’ll—That’s my manager. I gotta go. Gotta take it.” He grabbed up his phone and left, practically running out of the restaurant. As he hurried out, he ran into their waitress, causing her to nearly drop someone’s food on the floor.

“Oh! Leaving already, hon?” She called after him, but Richie didn’t answer. He burst out into the fresh air, the warm, autumn air hitting his skin. His phone continued to buzz, but he didn’t look at it. He needed to not exist, not be Richie Tozier for five minutes. He needed to get in his car and drive, drive until he didn’t feel like he ruined everything he loved. 

II

The high school hallways were always extremely hot towards the end of the school year; boys and girls packed like sardines as they moved from one class to another. The smell of chewing gum and BO and tater tots hung heavy in the humid air, nearly unbearable as the bell rang, signaling the end of the day. Richie slammed his locker closed, jumping only slightly when Eddie appeared behind it. He was biting his bottom lip and clutching a stack of papers to his chest, looking for all the world like he wanted to blurt something out, but was waiting for Richie to start. 

“Spaghetti!” Richie leaned forward, ruffling Eddie’s pristine hair. Fine strands of hair poked up between his fingers and Eddie huffed, taking one hand away from his papers to remove the offending limb. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Certainly not your modest behavior.” Eddie rolled his eyes, but with a smile, and leaned against the locker next to him. He looked particularly good today, Richie noted, in a striped t-shirt tucked into his jeans, which were cuffed just above his tanned ankles. He crossed one converse-clad foot over the other just as Richie mentally kicked himself for looking too long, but Eddie hadn’t seemed to notice. The swooping feeling in Richie’s stomach abated the longer Eddie flipped through the papers he was holding, about ten seconds later handing one to Richie.

It was a purple flyer, with the words “Junior Prom, May 22, 1993! Formal Event” printed in large font across the top. Underneath, the shadows of a boy and a girl danced, a disco ball above them. Richie flipped it over and the time, place, and front door fee were listed on the back. When Richie looked up, Eddie was in the middle of passing two out to a pair of girls walking past them. The swooping feeling was stoked once more, this time as Eddie turned back to him, freckles across his nose bouncing happily with his smile. 

“So, you coming, Richie? Bill, Mike, and Stan already said they would.” His wide, excited eyes gleamed a smoky caramel under the school’s fluorescents. 

“Wait, your mom is _actually_ letting you go?” 

Eddie’s brows lowered. “Yeah, of course my mom is letting me go, Dickhead. I’m part of the party planning committee.”

“Ugh!” Richie groaned out, falling dramatically onto the lockers behind him and bringing the back of his hand to his forehead while they clanged in rusty protest. “It’s going to be so awkward now. I told your mom she was going to be my date back in March. And now, Eddiekins, you’re asking me to go with you instead? For shame. I don’t know if your sweet mother will ever forgive me, but I suppose we all have our crosses to bear.”

Richie finally rolled his head back towards Eddie, cracking his eyes open to see his friend was continuing to level him with the most unimpressed gaze. The boy just looked at him, one dark eyebrow raised and cheeks slightly flushed.

“Are you done?” 

“Only if you want me to be, babe. I can go all night.” And Eddie made a face like he could have punched Richie. Richie winked at him. 

Years of practice taught him leaning into the thrill of his feelings for Eddie was for the best. He couldn’t change them, unraveling when and where the feelings started would be like trying to untangle Christmas lights after years of solitude in the attic. But jokes were…easy. He knew jokes. Humor was an old friend that called him when he was sick, that held him when he was scared. If he could do one thing, he could do humor, whether Eddie (or Richie, for that matter) liked it or not.

“I’ll have you know, my mom already got me a suit. She_ wants_ me to go.” Eddie sniffed, taking a step back from Richie. Instinctively, Richie took a step forward.

“Did she tell you it was also the suit your long-lost grandfather died in? The one she posed in the basement?” And then, a feminine voice meant to be vaguely Mrs. Kaspbrak-esque, “We all go a little mad sometimes, Eddie!”

Eddie flipped him off.

Richie relaxed against the lockers, looking down at the purple flyer, still in his hand. “So who’s the lucky lady?” He asked, and his stomach twisted in protest. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean, Spaghetti-man, who’re you taking? Who are you going to whisk off their feet into a night of pure bliss?” And if they had been anywhere else but a crowded school hallway, Richie might have picked Eddie up and spun him around, showing exactly what he envisioned for how Eddie would sweep some faceless girl off her feet. He might have even added a twirl at the end just to dip Eddie, like he was Audrey Hepburn or Molly Ringwald. Eddie would act flustered, but would be biting back a laugh the entire time Richie did it, he was sure.

“What?” The raised eyebrow was back, “I-I don’t have a date. I would have told you if I did.” He huffed. 

“Oh, come on!” Richie leaned forward even more, pinching one of Eddie’s round, freckled cheeks between his thumb and forefinger. “Don’t tell me this cute cute _cute _little face doesn’t have a date! I see the way Jenny from calc looks at you. She’d snap you just like her bubble gum.” And he laughed as Eddie pushed his hand away, took one, covert look around, then lunged to pinch Richie’s own cheek.

“Oh! Eds is going for the gold! C’mon, you’ll have to be just a bit taller than that!” Richie was already taller than Eddie by at least four inches, so when the other boy moved forward, Richie grabbed his wrist, holding it just high enough in the air that Eddie had to squirm closer. He was giggling, all high apples of his cheeks, pink and ripe enough to want to bite into. 

“Or is it Heather?” Richie asked. Truthfully, Heather was probably extremely likely to say yes, had Eddie asked. The pair had advanced biology together, and they often sat at lunch or free period, quizzing each other with flashcards that had terms like “exoskeleton” and “follicle” scrawled in gel pen. 

Heather was exactly everything Richie wasn’t. She was short, blond, and athletic, and sometimes, Richie would overhear her inviting Eddie to go jogging with her after school. He didn’t think Eddie ever accepted, though, despite the fact that Eddie had taken to jogging recently. More worrisome though, was the class Richie and Heather shared together; English. Through it all, Heather was quiet and well behaved, raising her hand to answer questions and never, ever talking without permission. Richie wasn’t entirely sure she had friends in the class, but what he could confirm was that his and Heather’s differences weren’t just skin deep, they were bone deep. Different, even on a metaphysical level. He didn’t want to think about what it would mean if Eddie actually liked her. 

“_Richie!_”

“Is it? Oh my God, is it?” Richie’s heart pounded. 

“_No_, asshole! Now let me—” He moved to yank his arm back, and Richie let him. He looked up at Richie, huffed, and then quickly pinched his nipple. Richie yelped; both in surprise and pain. 

“Hey! That’s not fair!” Richie crossed his arms over his chest, protecting himself from any new onslaughts Eddie might have been planning. “It was just a question Eds, geez.”

“Well—no. No, I’m not going with Jenny, or Heather, or anyone for that matter.” He was talking fast, hands gesticulating wildly in front of him. “And you know what, if you care so much, you can take me to prom, okay? Because I know _you _sure as Hell don’t have a date.”

“Gosh Eddie, you sure know how to charm a guy.”

“I’m serious!” He reached out to pinch Richie again, but Richie flinched away, “Take me to prom, fucker.”

Richie threw his head back and laughed, feeling as though he were on the point of imploding. He knew Eddie was joking, that it was all in good humor between them, but still…the idea sent a thrill down his spine. “You know what, I think I will. How could I possibly pass up the opportunity to take _the_ Eddie Kaspbrak to junior prom? I’m gonna show you the time of your life!”

“Ugh.” Eddie rolled his eyes, “Just don’t get me pregnant.”

“You know I can’t make those kinds of promises.” 

Eddie once again flipped him off, adjusting his backpack as he made a move to leave. It was getting late, the hallway crowds now thinning out to the few seniors who drove themselves. No doubt, Eddie had a track meet or student council meeting he was late for. 

“Pick me up at 6, okay? Please don’t be late, I really don’t want my mom to drive me.”

“Can do.” Richie nodded as Eddie turned and walked away. 

Just as he was about to round a corner, the other boy turned back and yelled, “And wear a suit!” To which Richie gave a thumbs up.

Had that just happened? Had Eddie actually just asked to go to prom with Richie? Had Richie agreed? Obviously, it was a joke. Obviously. But that didn’t stop the way his heart fluttered inside his ribcage, or the way he didn’t stop smiling his entire drive home. Long sleepovers spent snuggled into his chest, fingers and legs entwined as their hearts beat together in the stillness of Richie’s room. If that was all a joke, then Richie was more than happy to spend the rest of his life as Eddie’s fool, so long as Eddie should want him. 

“Mom!” He called through the house once he got home, his mother appearing around the kitchen corner in her robe, a cup of coffee in her hand. Her dark, curly hair was messy and there were obvious dark circles under her eyes, no doubt from the long night shifts she had worked the days prior. She still managed to crack a smile as Richie came bounding in, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

“What’s going on with you? Oh, is R.E.M. touring?” 

“What? No they haven’t—no, mom, does dad have a suit I can borrow?”

“Hm? Why?” She cocked her head to the side, much like a bird. 

“Prom is this weekend. I need a suit. So, like, does he?” 

She raised her eyebrows at him, and then proceeded to finish her coffee in one gulp. With the back of her hand, she wiped her mouth, then moved back towards the kitchen. “Let me take a look.” She called out, and Richie sighed happily. He loved being in on the joke.

III

Richie woke himself up by the sound of his own screams. This time, though, the echos bounced off the walls of the hotel room in a way so foreign to Richie, for a few seconds he thought he was still dreaming. Still, the pounding in his head was almost deafening, but he could not for the life of him stop hearing it.

_Richie. Richie. Richie. _

He gasped, ragged and brittle, sucking in all the air he could before letting out a sob. He hadn’t taken anything. No pills, no alcohol, no supplements. He had driven back to the hotel after leaving Mike at the restaurant, falling into bed in a disassociated haze before finally blacking out sometime close to sunset. He remembered he felt the evening rays peeking in through the sheer curtains and had felt warm. Now, he was freezing. Chilled to the bone, the damp from the cave soaking into him at a molecular level. 

He rolled over and the digital clock glowed 11:34 PM in the dark hotel room. _Richie. RichieRichie._ It sounded so different! So real! How could Mike have dismissed him like that, when he never heard the way Eddie’s voice changed, the way his whispers sounded increasingly desperate as the nights wore on? He had no idea. Eddie was alive, he had to be, there was no other explanation for what was happening.

Except there was. Except the only other explanation was that Richie was going mad, and Mike was right. Grief hurt. It changed you. You wore grief like a halloween costume, so dark and scary that everyone could see it and were warned to stay back, stay far, far away. 

That’s why Richie peeled himself out of bed and pulled on his day-old jeans he had left crumpled in the bathroom. He grabbed his car keys and his phone (twenty-eight unread texts, four missed calls) and left the hotel, not quite sure where he was going until he was on its street, inky black and empty save for one lone, flickering street lamp. 

Richie was back to feeling nothing. Nothing but the hollow cavern of his chest, his heartbeat echoing inside him as he inched his car down the street. So many times, as a child, Richie had been here, but now, he could hardly remember it. The closer he moved, though, the easier it became; how even from the outside, it smelled like rot, or the way nothing ever grew around the house but brittle weeds, even in the spring. How, when he was a child, the sheer mention of it would start him trembling in fear. 

But enough was enough. Because Mike was wrong, or maybe Richie was, but either way, he was going to prove something. That Eddie was still there, under the rubble and the dust and blood and screams. That even if Richie had to dig his way back underground to see for himself that truly his friend was gone, he would do that. Because as it stood, he was roughly two nightmares away from losing his entire goddamn mind. Goosebumps flashed down his neck and arms as he continued down the street, and as he rounded another dark corner, he knew it would still be there, same as it had always been: Neibolt House. 

Only…it wasn’t. 

As Richie pulled his car up to the address, the lot where Neibolt House once stood was empty. He turned off his ignition and climbed out, every fiber that was left of his thirteen year old self screaming at him to run away. But he didn’t. Because there was nothing to run from. The lot didn’t so much as have a scrap of rubble indicating the old, Victorian house once sprawled on this spit of land. It was flat, with specks of green grass trying their hardest to push up through the parched earth. Richie made it to the edge of the lot before he dropped to his knees in the dust. 

Richie felt the tears on his cheeks the second before he fell. He crumpled forward, landing with his head on his forearms in the dirt. This time, when he screamed, soul-shaking and lung-deflating as it was, Richie was entirely, unmistakably awake. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a kudos and comment if you enjoyed! I really appreciate them <3 Seriously. A lot.
> 
> Also! Art and playlists coming soon! If you want to visit my tumblr, I'm at https://poisonwrites.tumblr.com/ -- or come say hi on Twitter! @horror_boys


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